[CW: Discussions of self-harm. Big Rika episode ahead!]

What did Ai mean by her flight out of home, and her announcement that she’d be going back to school? I frankly wish that was a rhetorical question, and that I was about to unload some insightful musing on her psychology at this particular moment. Unfortunately, I’m as stumped as anyone – while it was tonally clear that the conclusion of episode six helped Ai reach some personal epiphany, the actual nature of that epiphany is unclear.

After an episode that was unabashedly constructed as an exploration of gaslighting’s debilitating power, it seems unlikely that Ai’s takeaway would be “actually, what everyone else tells me I’m supposed to feel is correct.” Her entire support network is telling her to doubt her suspicions of Sawaki – so has she decided to take those suspicions underground, and investigate Sawaki herself?

That might actually make sense, in more than just a strictly narrative sense. One of my major misgivings about the whole egg saving process is that by the time they “save” these girls, they’ve already been terribly abused – and what’s more, these trials only defeat the girls’ mental images of their harassers. In the real world, their abusers are still out there, still making life miserable for new victims. To truly change the world, these abusers must be confronted in reality, before they drive their victims to suicide. So is Ai simply taking her mission to the next level, and attempting to become a real-world egg savior?

Let’s find out.

Continue reading →

It would seem that Wonder Egg Priority’s shell is on the verge of cracking. After two episodes that held close to a traditional “monster of the week” model, each subsequent episode has driven new fissures through the show’s structure, as fantasy trials are fused together (like with Rika), contrasted against each other (Momo), or stretched like taffy into a kind of episode-fringing garnish (Neiru). This is no accidental process – though saving the egg girls is Ai’s ostensible quest, it’s been clear for quite some time that Wonder Egg’s “villain” encompasses more than just a few abusive caretakers. The burdens Ai and her fellow victims suffer from are systemic, and Wonder Egg understands that. Individual acts of bravery and solidarity cannot overcome a rigged game.

In light of that, Wonder Egg Priority has been gradually turning the lens away from the fantasy creatures Ai and her friends must face, towards the structures and guardians that gave rise to this system in the first place. So far, everything in this show has worked on the level of both narrative and metaphor, so I expect Acca and Ura-Acca to be the same – not just “bad guys,” but perhaps some irreducible reflection of society’s callousness towards the young. With the team assembled and the shell nearly broken, Wonder Egg Priority stands on a precipice. Let’s find out what’s waiting below.

Continue reading →

Hello everyone, and happy to have you here at Wrong Every Time. Today we’re returning to Wonder Egg Priority, as the veil begins to lift on the true nature of this egg-saving operation. It’s been pretty obvious from the start that we can’t trust Acca and Ura-Acca. Even if we set aside their mocking tone and the clear genre precedents for characters like this (Madoka’s Kyubey, Penguindrum’s Sanetoshi, etc), they’ve been consistently withholding key information from our leads, luring them into situations they’re unprepared for, and ridiculing them for their various traumas. They might be managing these egg trials, but it’s clearly not because they’re sympathetic to the girls involved.

Last episode made their antagonism even more explicit, as they essentially reiterated the reductive, misogynistic attitudes that informed these girls’ initial trauma. You could easily imagine one of the nightmare abusers from the egg worlds echoing Acca’s thoughts on how “women are easily led astray by their emotions.” This obviously isn’t the show’s own perspective; though the director stepping in was a nice gesture, every episode of Wonder Egg Priority has been consistently screaming “adolescents are driven to suicide by societal forces that breed alienation, and by society’s willingness to overlook abusers who play within the rules of its system.” That Acca and Ura-Acca don’t understand this, and in fact agree with the system oppressing these girls, is now clear. But what can you do, when even your theoretical saviors are complicit in your abuse?

Let’s find out.

Continue reading →

Hello all, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to dive back into Wonder Egg Priority, and at last catch up on the ongoing discussions. Wonder Egg Priority is such an aesthetically compelling, intellectually intriguing production that it’s essentially brought anime blogging back to life. kVin has already written multiple essential posts regarding its production, Emily’s consistently illuminating the nuances of its flower language, Steve’s putting in overtime work over at ANN, and even my friends at Isn’t It Electrifying? have been throwing their hats in the ring.

The reasons for this are fairly obvious: Wonder Egg Priority is a critic’s delight, combining Naoko Yamada’s cinematic approach to visual storytelling with a surrealist, thematically driven narrative that juggles sharp-edged topics with ease. It is equally confident conveying the precise emotional tenor of witnessing a classmate being bullied, and also the fantastical disorientation of falling into another world. For those who see anime as a uniquely compelling vehicle for conveying intimate human feelings, Wonder Egg Priority feels like an avatar of our faith in practice.

Just as Flip Flappers illustrated the wild discord of our dreamscapes as a path to knowing ourselves, just as The Eccentric Family used a dash of magical realism to evoke the jubilant freedom of young adulthood, so does Wonder Egg Priority use its fantasy flourishes to convey the overbearing weight of social stigma, self-hatred, and alienation. Its heroines are playing a game they are presumably designed to lose; meanwhile, the steady procession of victims and villains illustrates how all young women are set up for failure, where abusers frequently benefit from institutional support, and victims are taught to blame themselves. Even if the eggs weren’t purchased from a gacha machine, it’d be clear this is a rigged game. All Ai and her friends have is solidarity, but as a group who’ve been selected precisely because they feel they drove others to suicide, can they really learn to trust each other, and love themselves?

Let’s find out.

Continue reading →

Hello all, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we are absolutely continuing our journey through Wonder Egg Priority, as this show kicks all the kinds of ass, and I’m frankly tired of being behind on its weekly discussion. I know, Nick Creamer caring about ongoing anime discussions in the year twenty twenty-one? It’s a shock to me as well, but Wonder Egg Priority is just that kind of show; a story that feels instantly essential, and which provokes the long-slumbering dragons of anime blogging to once more raise their feathered quills, and rise together in praise for a show that’s Genuinely Really Good.

Wonder Egg’s second episode held relatively closely to the model of the first, introducing a new egg girl for Ai to save, and establishing the beginnings of a friendship with fellow egg savior Neiru. We also received a bit more context regarding Ai’s relationship with Koito, as well as the parameters of her egg-saving missions. Given all that, I’m expecting the show to soon disrupt its episodic model, but we might be in for another episode or two of monster-of-the-week missions, if only to integrate the other girls from the show’s OP. Alright, that’s enough speculation from me; let’s dive right back into Wonder Egg Priority!

Continue reading →